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I was nervous. I was only four days into my new learning designer role at Inspire Group and I’d asked Stu if I could use company resources on my own time to build a learning solution for my favourite charity – the Royal Children’s Hospital (RCH) Good Friday Appeal (GFA). I’d been approached by the GFA team a week before starting.

“That sounds great Ange”, Stu said. “Let’s get them in to chat about what they need and what we can deliver. We’ll assign the resources and run it like any other project.” I was lost for words. Was he for real?

Yes he was.

And I was overwhelmed. I had volunteered for this cause every year since my early teens. To contribute to this event in such a way meant the world to me.

Yvette Pratt (Communications and Partnerships Manager) and Melanie Bowie (Operations Officer) of the GFA team met with us at our Fitzroy studio in October 2016, and after mapping the volunteer journey, it was agreed that a mobile solution would be best.

A small project team of myself as Learning Designer, Todd Hammington (Lead Visual Designer), Danny Kendrick (Digital Lead) Tim Munro (Graphic Designer), and Anthony van Dijk (Developer) worked closely with Yvette and Melanie to design, prototype, test and build a mobile induction toolkit. There was a general volunteer induction, and a second toolkit and quick reference guide for the phone room volunteers.

“The professionalism and passion of Inspire Group continues to amaze us. Inspire Group listened to our needs and delivered beyond our expectations. From our first meeting through the development, testing, build and evaluation, we were supported each and every step of the way.”

Yvette Pratt Communications and Partnerships Manager – Comments on the Learning Solution for The Royal Children’s Hospital Good Friday Appeal

And on Good Friday 2017, Inspire Group lived its tag line. We delivered life-changing learning that helped enable 1200 volunteers working at the RCH GFA in Melbourne navigate their way around the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre (MCEC), register their arrival, get to their shift and know what to expect. For those in the phone room – prior to their shift, they had access to information on how to answer the phones, what to say and how to process donations in the portal. It wasn’t so much the volunteers’ lives who’d been changed, but it was the impact it had had down the line for the sick children and their families who’d benefit from the funds raised.

The mobile site for the general volunteer induction provided a convenient way for volunteers to refer to their phones while navigating from point A to point B in the MCEC. Volunteers had previously had to download a 40-page pdf and print it, not to mention attend a briefing the weekend before at the MCEC to understand emergency response requirements. Phone room volunteers had their own mobile toolkit. Phone room volunteers had not previously seen the phones or the donation portal before their shift on the day. They had the chance to review and understand their function prior to arriving.

Feedback from the volunteers about the online briefing was overwhelmingly positive. Some of the comments included:

“I could undertake the briefing at a time and location that suited me. I am based 2 hours from Melbourne so to travel to Melbourne for a briefing would have been more difficult.”

“Easy to follow.”

“Simple, clear and easy to follow.”

“It enabled me to do the briefing in my own time – so I could pay full attention.”

One volunteer commented that they had completed it while on holiday in New York.

“The online portals developed by Inspire Group delivered on the operational aspects of managing 1200 volunteers in an informative and approachable way, as well as highlighting the Good Friday Appeal’s key objective in raising funds to support the staff, patients and their families at The Royal Children’s Hospital. The strength of the Appeal is thanks to our wonderful volunteers and thanks to Inspire Group we can now support them through easy to use and informative portals.”

Yvette Pratt Communications & Partnerships Manager – Comments on the Learning Solution for The Royal Children’s Hospital Good Friday Appeal

And so Inspire Me has been born. Inspire Me is an arm of Inspire Group whose purpose is to give back to the community. What an honour it’s been to design and deliver learning that’s life changing to such an integral event in the Melbourne community.

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Inspire Group is a custom learning design company, and the nature of what we do means we make discoveries daily that we share on our learning design blog. We learn a lot of things, and that’s fortunate in a business full of people who love learning! Think of this as your ‘go-to’ blog for everything related to learning. Including future trends in learning, elearning, leadership, brain science, team training and more.